Will Newt prevail?

Opinion: November 23, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

When Richard M. Nixon ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, he faced a daunting problem: A lot of voters just didn’t like him. Nixon had made his name in politics as an angry, partisan hatchet man, famous for lashing out against Democrats and the news media. To win the presidency, he needed to find a way to soften that too-harsh image.

In the months before the 1968 primaries, Nixon’s campaign staged gauzy television segments that showed the candidate gently answering questions from ordinary citizens, not pesky reporters. In a nation that was divided by domestic crises and the war in Vietnam, Nixon stressed positive themes and “the lift of a driving dream.” Reporters wrote about a “New Nixon” and voters who were rallying to his cause.

Now, almost half a century later, another not-always-lovable conservative is trying to stage a similar comeback: Newt Gingrich, who polls show in a virtual tie with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Elimination

Part of the reason, as Gingrich himself says, is simple process of elimination: Conservative voters have tried out other candidates — Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain — and found each wanting.

But there’s another reason for Gingrich’s rise: He doesn’t sound as angry as he once did. We appear to be witnessing “New Newt.”

Old Newt — Angry Newt, the one who entered the presidential campaign last spring — talked in apocalyptic terms about threats to American culture. Old Newt wrote about “a secular-socialist machine” led by the Democratic Party that “represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did”

New Newt — Presidential Newt — talks about fiscal challenges more than cultural threats and says they don’t look that scary. “There are ways to solve this,” he told voters in Iowa last week. The economy can be fixed, he said, simply by allowing more oil and gas drilling, reducing fraud in federal programs and “putting people back to work.”

Old Newt attacked other Republicans. He once called every modern GOP leader before Ronald Reagan “pathetic.” He condemned his own caucus in the House as “cannibals” (they were pushing him out of office at the time). Only last spring, he denounced a House Republican proposal for Medicare reform as “right-wing social engineering.” (He apologized for that one.)

Bipartisan Newt

New Newt is conciliatory, even bipartisan. In several debates, he’s refused to criticize his rivals and scolded moderators for — gasp! — trying to accentuate their differences. As president, he told voters in Iowa, one his first acts would be to reach out to Democrats.

“It’s become much too partisan in both parties,” said the man who has been accused of destroying the bipartisan tradition in the House of Representatives.

Gingrich still slings contempt at Democrats and the news media, of course.

But most of the time, he says he’s striving for a higher plane. “I think I’m a much more mature person,” he said recently.

Back in 1968, New Nixon bested Michigan Gov. George W. Romney, Mitt Romney’s father, for the GOP presidential nomination. But don’t presume a similar story this time.

Doyle McManus is a columnist for The Los Angeles Times. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.